” A graphic illustration of Western wishful thinking about the decline of Islamic State (IS) is a well-publicized map issued by the Pentagon to prove that the self-declared caliphate has lost 25 per cent of its territory since its big advances last year.

Unfortunately for the Pentagon, sharp-eyed American journalists soon noticed something strange about its map identifying areas of IS strength. While it shows towns and villages where IS fighters have lost control around Baghdad, it simply omits western Syria where they have been advancing in and around Damascus.

The Pentagon displayed some embarrassment about its dodgy map, but it largely succeeded in its purpose of convincing people that IS is in retreat. Many news outlets across the world republished the map as evidence of the success of air strikes by the United States and its allies in support of the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria. The capture of Tikrit after a month-long siege is cited as a further sign that a re-energized Iraqi state is winning and one day in the not too distant future will be able to recapture Mosul in the north and Anbar province in the west.

How much of this comforting news is true? Recall that the loss or retention of territory is not a good measure of a force such as IS using quasi-guerrilla tactics. Good news from the point of view of Baghdad is that its forces finally retook the small city of Tikrit, though its recapture was primarily the work of 20,000 Shia militia and not the Iraqi army, which only had some 3,000 soldiers involved in the battle. It was not a fight to the finish and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said IS only committed a few hundred fighters to holding the city.”

” More than prisoners have been slaughtered by Islamic State militants near Mosul in Iraq. According to the Yazidi Progress Party, hundreds were murdered by Isis on Friday in the Tal Afar district.

It comes after around 40,000 people were kidnapped at gunpoint when the terrorists attacked Yazidi villages last summer. The party statement, quoted by Shafaq News, condemned the ‘heinous criminal acts’ committed by Isis against the Yazidis.

Meanwhile, a Yazidi lawmaker quoted a lower number of victims today, and said they were shot at a prison camp in Tal Afar. Legislator Mahma Khalil said he spoke to four different people with knowledge of what happened inside the camp.

‘ The militants want to spread horror among them to force them to convert to Islam or to do something else,’ he said.”

” A former 10th Mountain Division soldier is helping Christian militias in Iraq protect their homes from Islamic State group militants.

Brett Felton, who previously served with the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, told a crew from CBS News’s “60 Minutes” that his Christian faith inspired him to travel into the country.

“ People say, ‘You’re crazy for doin’ this,’” Mr. Felton said on the program. “I think people are crazy for not doing their part, to be honest with you. To me, for the Christians here, it would be an honor to give my life helping these people.”

Mr. Felton deployed to Iraq in 2006, and left the Army in 2007.

The Troy, Mich., native arrived in Iraq after sneaking over from Lebanon, where he was studying.

The news program’s crew found him in February training forces in Bakufa, a small village north of Mosul, where many of its Christian residents have fled.”

” The American-led coalition is now launching air strikes to back up Iranian and Iraqi troops in the key city of Tikrit, a U.S. official tells The Daily Beast. Those forces had previously kicked off their operation to reclaim Saddam Hussein’s from the self-proclaimed Islamic State without informing the U.S. military. But when that campaign stalled, they turned to American air power.

A U.S. defense official told The Daily Beast that U.S. conducted 15 strikes beginning at 315 p.m. EDT, targeting weapons storage facilities, barracks and road blocks set up by ISIS. All the targets were “pre-planned” the official said, suggesting an operation planned before the Iraqis formally sought approval.

The Tikrit campaign was launched with a patchwork force of 20,000 Shiite militiamen, 3,000 Iraqi troops, and a bevy of Iranian troops, tanks, weapons and missile strikes. And in the early days of the campaign, Gen. Qassem Suleiman, leader of the Iranian Quds force, was on the ground in Tikrit.”

While Obama actively works to ensure Israel’s extinction and the Ayatollah shouts “death to America” our troops are backing the Iranian military with airstrikes … we are being led by either morons or collaborators, you choose .

” Bibi’s win is another in a long string of Middle East failures by President Obama and will add to the belief by both our friends and our enemies in the region that the costs of being Obama’s friend can outweigh the costs of his enmity. Egypt’s President Mubarak thought he was Obama’s friend; so did his successor President Morsi. The Syrian moderate rebels expected their friend in the White House to back them. The Zionist Union thought that promising to work more closely with Obama was the ticket to an electoral win in Israel. Meanwhile, as Bibi can now testify, those who defy this White House don’t seem to pay much of a price: just ask Syria’s Assad or, for that matter, his patrons in Iran. ISIS has more visibility and power in the Middle East than al-Qaeda ever did, while the Sunni Arab tribes of Iraq who saved America’s bacon during the surge and who counted on American influence to protect their interests in postwar Iraq are being overrun by Shi’a militias.”

While we would argue that for the past six years the present administration has done everything in it’s power to destroy the above referenced US-Israeli relationship and that the “two state solution” is a non-starter , we’ll set that aside and let the esteemed Walter Russell Mead continue…

” The tomb of Iraq’s late dictator Saddam Hussein was virtually leveled in heavy clashes between militants from the Islamic State group and Iraqi forces in a fight for control of the city of Tikrit.

Fighting intensified to the north and south of Saddam Hussein’s hometown Sunday as Iraqi security forces vowed to reach the center of Tikrit within 48 hours. Associated Press video from the village of Ouja, just south of Tikrit, shows all that remains of Hussein’s once-lavish tomb are the support columns that held up the roof.”

” Poster-sized pictures of Saddam, which once covered the mausoleum, are now nowhere to be seen amid the mountains of concrete rubble. Instead, Shiite militia flags and photos of militia leaders mark the predominantly Sunni village, including that of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the powerful Iranian general advising Iraqi Shiite militias on the battlefield.”

” Back in June 2014, an iconic and possibly legendary figure arose to fight the terrorist group ISIS. Reputed to be a university lecturer and Tae kwon do champion in Iraq, the man going by the name Abu Azrael has become known to the ISIS-fighting world the “Angel of death.

Azrael has become the face of the Imam Ali brigade, a group of Shi-a fighters that some believe are backed by Iran. According to the Daily Mail, the group is fighting alongside the Iraqi army, showing how the cross-cutting cleavages among national interests in the Middle East are complex indeed.”

” After fighting with rebels in Libya and Syria, Matthew VanDyke has rolled up in northern Iraq, but the celebrity American revolutionary-cum-filmmaker has traded his fatigues for a three-piece suit.

VanDyke, who rose to fame as a foreign fighter backing Libyan rebels against Moamer Kadhafi, has just finished leading his new military contracting firm through its first assignment — training Christian volunteers to take on jihadists.

Funded by Christian groups from abroad, mainly from the United States, the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit (NPU) aims to bring a local Christian militia to bear against the Islamic State group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria.

VanDyke is one of the best-known — and least camera-shy — figures in an expanding and complex constellation of foreign fighters, organisations and donors getting involved in a private war against the jihadists.

” This is an extension of my work as a revolutionary,” he says as he takes a sip from his cappuccino in a cafe in the Kurdish capital of Arbil. “What gives somebody else the right to sit home and do nothing?”

The 35-year-old came to prominence in 2011 when he joined Libyan rebels in the fight to overthrow Kadhafi. He was held by regime forces in solitary confinement for more than five months.

The film “Point and Shoot” directed byMarshall Curry, which won the best documentary award at the Tribeca Festival last year, recounts the 35,000-mile motorcycle odyssey that led VanDyke to Libya and which he describes as “a crash course in manhood”.

Not one to shy away from self-aggrandizement, VanDyke’s official website claims that his own documentary on the Syrian conflict, in which he volunteered in 2012, won no fewer than 82 prizes.

A few months ago, VanDyke changed tack and decided to form his military contracting firm, the Sons of Liberty International (SOLI), with the training of a few hundred NPU volunteers as a first assignment.

The Nineveh in the NPU’s name refers to a northern region which Iraq’s Assyrian Christians and other religious minorities consider their ancestral home.

IS last year declared a “caliphate” over parts of Iraq and Syria it had seized, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes, including many Iraqi Christians.

The mostly Sunni Arab group has been accused of persecuting other communities and this week was reported to have taken several hundred Assyrian Christians hostage in northeastern Syria.

A US-led international coalition launched an air war on the jihadists in August and dispatched forces to train Kurdish and Iraqi federal troops who hope to eventually retake lost ground.

In the meantime other — less official — parties have been drawn into the conflict from abroad.

Even as we mourn the loss of the first western volunteer to die fighting ISIS the news is filled with encouraging reports of private citizens and organizations , Christian and otherwise , stepping up to the plate as the western powers , those dauntless defenders of liberty , dither , bluster and wring their hands .

Read the rest of this article at Yahoo Newsand see the links below for many similar tales …

” Iraqi local officials in Iraq’s town of al-Baghdadi have warned of another ISIS mass burning massacre. The terror organization surrounded a compound several days ago that houses more than 1000 families and burned 45 people alive.

“ ISIS has killed more than 150 people from al-Obaid tribe…some of them were burned alive and some were beheaded…they were policemen…some of them fought against ISIS before,” said sheikh Mal Allah al-Obaidi, the head of the local council in the al-Baghdadi.

An Iraqi air base is located next to al-Baghdadi. More than 300 US military service members are providing training, and coordinating US air raids there. As the US military official at the central command announced that the US will train 12 Iraqi brigades to start an Iraqi operation to liberate the northern city of Mosul in April or May, reports emerged suggesting US Marines will conduct a limited operation in the border area between Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to strike ISIS jihadists who control the border area.

“ US forces have landed in al-Habbaniya air base,” said Saadon Shehan, a blogger from al-Ramadi, the provincial capital of al-Anbar province in western Iraq.

The target of the Marines supposed operation is to cut a major funding source to ISIS by ending its control of the border area. It is estimated that ISIS makes $150,000 daily by collecting money from travelers using the Iraqi – Jordanian highway. “

” When ISIS executed a Jordanian pilot by immolation and released the video as propaganda, they may have lit a fire for which they weren’t prepared. Jordan’s King Abdullah quoted the Clint Eastwood film Unforgiven to promise revenge, and he meant what he said. Jordan has shifted “thousands” of troops to the Iraqi border after stepping up aerial attacks on ISIS leadership, according to NBC News:

Jordan has deployed “thousands” of ground troops to its border with war-torn Iraq as it ramps up a campaign against ISIS militants who burned alive a pilot, two Jordanian government officials told NBC News on Tuesday.

Supposedly this is a border force to prevent ISIS infiltration from Iraq, but right now the terrorist quasi-state has its hands full dealing with the Kurds and the coalition bombing. The UAE has now rejoined the latter effort after initially balking when the Jordanian pilot could not be retrieved. The brutal manner of his execution seems to have convinced the emirate to re-engage, in yet another example of the backfire over ISIS’ attempts to intimidate others in the region.

The Jordanian ground troops may have another purpose. Sky News reports that the Iraqi military will begin a “major ground offensive” against ISIS in western Iraq over the next few weeks:

John Allen, the US co-ordinator for the anti-IS coalition of Western and Arab countries, said on Sunday Iraqi troops would begin a major offensive ‘in the weeks ahead’. “

This quote says it all :

” The Saudi-friendly, London-based Asharq al-Awsat an a column from its former editor calling for a pan-Arab army to sweep across Iraq and Syria to destroy ISIS. He also scoffs at Barack Obama’s “indolence,” and at his professed “strategic patience,” referring to it instead as “strategic cowardice” “

Are the Jordanian troops to be the anvil to Iraq’s hammer ? We shall see … Hot Air has more

” Next to the Iranian nuclear program or Putin’s neo-Soviet expansionism, the question of whether NBC News “managing editor” Brian Williams is a self-aggrandizing liar or a mentally ill fantasist is a relatively minor matter, notwithstanding that he is the very embodiment of the strange antiquated assumptions of network news – that because a chap looks like a 1950s department-store mannequin he’s your go-to guy for economic analysis and foreign policy.

As to the subject at issue, my general view of “personal stories” (including my own) was summed up by Mel Brooks on stage a few decades back reminiscing about his life. After one especially uproarious anecdote, he said, “I swear every word is true. Well, no. The mildly funny stuff is true. The mezzo-mezzo stuff is mostly true. But the really funny stuff is entirely invented.” That formula applies to the dramatic stuff, too. As you tell a story over the years, as Brian Williams did with his RPG-hit-chopper shtick, it gets too honed, too sharp.

Then too there is the phenomenon that creeps with age – when anecdotes you once told about other people mutate into anecdotes you tell about yourself. The first example of this I encountered, back when I was very young, was the great Royal Ballet choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton, who regaled me with a string of fascinating personal stories, all of which I discovered, upon returning home, had happened to Diaghilev or Massine or Ninette de Valois.

But again: I can understand that. You were there. You were part of the scene. You knew the people. You laughed and smoked and danced with them. Why couldn’t it have been you who got off the devastatingly witty retort?

But I find it harder to believe that a man can “accidentally” claim his helicopter has been hit by an RPG. You have to feel that to know what it’s like. And, if you’ve never felt it, how can you “accidentally” go around describing it to David Letterman on TV and Alec Baldwin on radio for years on end?

Back in 2003, I was in Iraq just a few weeks after Brian Williams. As I mention in The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, I rented a car at Amman airport, drove through Jordan’s eastern desert, crossed the border and kept going. A little bit of it was scary, a lot of it was funny, relaxing, dull… As the years go by and I tell someone about the goofy guy I met gassing up in Ramadi, I have to stop myself and think, “No, wait. Was it Ramadi? Or Fallujah?” I’m sure, if you combed through a decade’s worth of radio interviews, you could find inconsistencies.”

” NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years.

Williams repeated the claim Friday during NBC’s coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters, a game to which Williams accompanied him. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry.

The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.

“ I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.” “

” The world’s deadliest military sniper is a Royal Marine with 173 confirmed kills, including 90 members of the Taliban in just one day, it has been reported.

The Briton, who has not been named, had served in the Royal Navy’s elite unit for more than a decade and recorded most of his kills during a six-month tour of Afghanistan in 2006/7, having also served in Iraq.

The figure puts the corporal, reportedly married with two children and from southern England, ahead of US Navy SEAL commando Chris Kyle, who had 160 confirmed kills to make him the most lethal US sniper.

Kyle’s exploits are the subject of a new film called American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper.

According to The Sun, the British sniper is said to have hit 90 Taliban fighters in a stronghold in just one day. It is thought his total number of ‘kills’ could be even higher than 173 if unconfirmed strikes were taken into account.

A source told The Sun: ‘He is not interested in scores or kill counts. He took no satisfaction in the job he had to do.

‘ Because he saw the enemy as humans he has not struggled emotionally or psychologically with what has happened.

‘ He had a unique job at a unique time. He must be the most lethal sniper in the world. But that is not a title he would seek out or revel in.’ “

While both Kyle and the unnamed Royal Marine are/were extremely good at their jobs , no one can surpass the king of all snipers , “The White Death” , Finnish soldier Simo Hayha , who logged over 500 kills during the “Winter War” against the Soviet Union in WW II .

” American Sniper has set its sights on another record: Within a matter of days, it will overtakeSteven Spielberg’s WWII classic Saving Private Ryan to become the top-grossing war-themed film of all time in North America, not accounting for inflation.

Clint Eastwood’s history-making movie jumped the $200 million mark on Sunday, putting it ahead of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, another WWII title, which topped out at $198.5 million domestically in 2001. American Sniper is distinct from those two film in being set during a modern-day conflict.

Saving Private Ryan, released in 1998, earned $216.7 million domestically. Taking inflation into account, that would equal roughly $312 million in today’s terms. But a record is a record, and the history-making Sniper will cross $216 million sometime this week for Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow.

Films addressing recent conflicts have had a decidedly mixed track record, but American Sniper is benefiting from a massive turnout in America’s heartland, as well as from its six Oscar nominations, including best picture and best actor for Bradley Cooper’s performance as the late Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who fought in the second Iraq war.

In celebrating Sniper’s $200 million milestone, Warners domestic distribution chief Dan Fellmansaid that Eastwood “created a gripping drama with a rare insight into the toll of war that has resonated with audiences in almost every demographic.” “

” At least 150 women who refused to marry militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, were executed in the western Iraqi province of Al-Anbar, Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights said.

“At least 150 females, including pregnant women, were executed in Fallujah by a militant named Abu Anas Al-Libi after they refused to accept jihad marriage,” the statement said. “Many families were also forced to migrate from the province’s northern town of Al-Wafa after hundreds of residents received death threats.”

By all means , let’s try to understand these barbaric religious zealots Hillary … use your “smart power” … the countless innocent women and children of the Muslim world are sure to offer you their support …

” Islamic State terrorists have begun their promised killing of Christians in Mosul, and they have started with the children. According to a report via CNN, a Chaldean-American businessman has said that killings have started in Mosul and children’s heads are being erected on poles in a city park.

“There is a park in Mosul,” Mark Arabo told CNN during a Skype interview from San Diego, “where they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick and have them in the park.” “

” Arabo, who is a prominent Chaldean-American businessman and met with other leaders of his community in the White House last week, has called upon American political leaders to grant asylum to about 300,000 Christians fleeing the ISIS invasion. “

” “The world hasn’t seen this kind of atrocity in generations,” he told CNN. He’s mostly correct. Although genocides have happened repeatedly throughout history, including famous genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, as well as Cambodia, the genocide perpetrated against Christians and other minorities is extreme, partly because it is being gleefully publicized. “

Catholic Online has more , including pictures of a horrific nature courtesy of the “Religion Of Peace”

” America’s plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group’s fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.

The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.

Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town’s remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani.

In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis’s toughest opponents in Syria. “Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively.” “

” He’s the war-ending President who, as of Tuesday, has ordered airstrikes in seven different countries (that we know of).

President Barack Obama has always acknowledged there are times when military force is necessary. Even when he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he said there could be instances when war is “morally justified.”

But though he campaigned for the presidency on ending U.S.-led wars, Obama’s administration has certainly been willing to use force when it sees fit.”

” Barack Obama is destined to be the greatest flop in American presidential history. He is, in every sense of the word, an utter failure.

Consider first his signature achievement, Obamacare. Not only has Obama had to delay implementation, creating a perfect precedent for his Republican successor to do the same, but the law is more unpopular today than it has ever been according to all polling data.

Pew Research reports that 55% of Americans disapprove of Obamacare. A clear plurality of Americans believe that they will be worse off because of Obamacare. CBS News lists the “strongly approve” of Obamacare at 16%, while “strongly disapprove” is a whopping 47%. Every polling organization, no matter how the question is worded, shows the same public disdain for this law.

Obama, who “won” the Nobel Peace Prize almost as soon as he took office, is now officially a warmonger president – but one who leads from behind and rejects every attempt to form a national consensus policy, and whose utter haplessness in guiding national security is stunning. Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq – everywhere in the world, really – Obama’s foreign policy has been almost comic opera.”

Much has been written and said about the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (the Levant) — ISIS. Most of the commentators have looked at ISIS as another terrorist organization, an al-Qaeda off-shoot, waging a guerrilla war with cohorts of unorganized thugs. The Afghani-style gear, the pickup trucks, the all black or army fatigue uniforms which most ISIS fighters wear, the unshaven beards, the turbans, hoods and head “bandanas” with Arabic inscriptions have added to the confusion.”

” In fact, ISIS is much more than a terrorist organization; it is a terrorist state with almost all governing elements. Over the last three years, since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, the Islamic State developed from an extremist fringe and marginal faction participating in the civil war to become the strongest, most ferocious, best funded and best armed militia in the religious and ethnic war that is waged today in Syria and Iraq.

But first, what is the name of this entity and what are the borders of the Islamic State? From the first days of its appearance in Syria in 2011, the organization was known as ISIS. However, since the declaration in Summer 2014 of the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate headed by Ibrahim ‘Awad Ibrahim Al Badri al Samarra’i, alias Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — now the self-declared “Caliph Ibrahim” — ISIS has been transformed into the “Islamic State” (Al Dawla Al Islamiya ) in order to stress the fact that the Caliphate is not to be limited to Iraq, Syria, Israel (Palestine), Jordan and the Levant, but its ambitions lie well beyond those limited borders.”

This may or may not include the summer when an asteroid crashed near the Yucatan peninsula, almost extinguishing life on earth. But, with Labor Day past and the kids going back to school, it’s time to reflect on the summer of 2014.

Terrorists announced a new caliphate in Syria and Iran, as Vlad the Shirtless warned of possible nuclear exchanges in Europe. All-out war erupted between Israel and Hamas, and the entire Middle East seemed to fall apart faster than an Obamacare promise. Rioting broke out in the Midwest. (For a while it was hard to tell if the video footage was from the Middle East or the Middle West.) An Ebola outbreak killed thousands in Africa. The U.S. economy continued to stumble…

But the controversy that caused the Twitterverse to explode was when Barack Obama showed up on TV … wearing a tan suit. (Best Headline of the summer-WaPo: The audacity of taupe) Maybe his clown suit was at the cleaners?

More serious news outlets were concerned about Obama’s admission that he didn’t have a strategy to deal with ISIL. Obama didn’t have a strategy? This is news?

Speaking of which, over the summer some in the media actually began to question Obama’s achievements in office. Although this may have happened only because their dictionaries finally ran out of superlatives to use.

On the subject of ISIL, is its name ISIL, or ISIS, or IS? All have been used. To quote Bill Clinton, I guess it depends on what your definition of IS is.

Regarding the Clintons, is it just me, or was it a little ironic that Hillary spent much of the summer promoting an autobiography of her time as Secretary of State. Curiously enough, it wasn’t titled, “At This Point, What Difference Does It Make?” “

” Australia will help deliver weapons to Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq in an attempt to counter the threat posed by Islamic State militants, while participating in further humanitarian air drops.

Tony Abbott said the US government had requested that Australia help to transport stores of military equipment, including arms and munitions, as part of a multinational effort.

“Royal Australian Air Force C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster aircraft will join aircraft from other nations including Canada, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and the United States to conduct this important task,” the prime minister said in a statement on Sunday.

“Australia’s contribution will continue to be coordinated with the government of Iraq and regional countries.”

The Labor opposition signaled its support for the decision, saying the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were the only effective barrier to Isis slaughtering civilian populations while advancing through northern Iraq.”